All Beasts Together

By Randall Allen Farmer

The Commander (Book Three)

Carol Hancock is a victim of Transform Sickness, a Major Transform known as an Arm. After graduating from her training at the hands of the mentally unstable Arm, Stacy Keaton, she establishes a territory in the Chicago area. However, her enemies, the Chimeras who call themselves Hunters, and their master, Wandering Shade, do not want Carol in Chicago, and vow to chase her away. Her established allies, Keaton and the researcher Henry Zielinski, are far away, but still in communication with her, and can offer no direct aid.

Carol forges new alliances as she fights back against Wandering Shade’s beastly Chimeras, and learns how to live as a free Arm. Her hidden ally, the Major Transform Crow named Gilgamesh, faces a choice of dangers, and chooses a new path for the flighty Crows. A Crow by the name of Sky appears, and presents a mission to Focus Rizzari that will shake up the Transform community. Henry Zielinski, forced to take shelter under the protection of the Focus Lori Rizzari, makes an important discovery he hopes can help Carol, at least indirectly, in her fight against the Chimeras.

Wandering Shade shows no signs of giving up the fight, though.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Randall Allen Farmer
• Release date: May 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476132488

Randall Allen Farmer

Greetings.I am an author, science nerd, an amateur photographer, a father, and a pencil and paper game designer and gamemaster. My formal education was in geology and geophysics, and back in the day I worked in the oil industry tweaking software associated with finding oil. Since I left the oil industry, I've spent most of my time being a parent, but did have enough time to get two short stories published (in Analog and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine). Now I'm giving epublishing a try, and I have an ample supply of novel-length publishable material to polish and publish.

Book preview

All Beasts Together

Book Three of The Commander

Randall Allen Farmer

Copyright © 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 by Randall Allen Farmer

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work, in whole or in part, in any form. This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, organizations and products depicted herein are either a product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All Beasts Together

Book Three of The Commander

All you beasts of the field, come together for your meat, even all you beasts of the wood.

His watchmen are blind, they are all without knowledge;

they are all dogs without tongues, unable to make a sound; stretched out dreaming, loving sleep.

- Isaiah 56: 9-10 (Bible in Basic English)

Part 1

The Lonely Road

This then is life.

Here is what has come to the surface after so many throes and convulsions.

How Curious! How real!

Underfoot the divine soil, overhead the sun.

- Walt Whitman

Chapter 1

Her choice was ‘be a bitch’ or ‘be enslaved by your own household’. If you had a choice, which would you have chosen?

Inventing Our Future

Gilgamesh: September 8, 1967

In, in, in, Sinclair said.

Night surrounded Gilgamesh in the culvert, murmuring madness. Shadow, he whispered back. Must go… He needed to run and he could barely walk. There, up the slope at the edge of the culvert, he spotted Sinclair’s pickup, a beat up ’61 Chevy. He shook his head, trying to quiet the rampage inside. What surfaced out of his mental chaos was the overwhelming urge to escape Philadelphia and its horrors, and the remnant of hope that if he got to Shadow, he would be safe.

Gilgamesh felt Sinclair’s arms tighten around his shoulders, urging him to stand. I’m glad I found you. Shadow said you survived. Up we go. Gilgamesh followed Sinclair’s lead and let the other Crow load him into the pickup, where he curled up, half on the floor and half on the ripped passenger seat. He used his belongings, the Philadelphia notes, as his pillow. Sinclair covered him with a blanket.

Five hours passed in the rumbling truck, while the sun rose from the bare hints of dawn to the brilliant illumination of a clear fall morning. Sinclair wouldn’t go anywhere near the freeways and wouldn’t go faster than forty-five miles an hour. He complained about the traffic, cursing the entire way. Normally he left his truck in a lot by the Hoboken Path station, or so he said, but he, thankfully, decided Gilgamesh was in no shape for any subway rides and drove him into Manhattan.

Shadow’s stationery store was well north of midtown, up just past 83rd street, in a shabby, quiet neighborhood filled with small shops and old brownstones. The girl behind the counter looked up from her magazine and raced to help Sinclair with Gilgamesh when they came to the door. A Crow, who had to be Shadow, came rushing down the main aisle of the store to help as well, the wooden floor creaking as he walked. The three of them bundled Gilgamesh away from the gaze of two mildly curious customers. Gilgamesh had stopped thinking hours ago, and let the sensation of continued life wash over him.

Shadow’s store was small, long and narrow, with two aisles that ran the length of the customer area, lined with shelves displaying paper, pens and stationery. The small windows at the end let in little light and the shop was comfortably dim. The door at the far end of the store led them to a small storage area, filled high with boxes of pens and paper. A door on the left led to a small bathroom. Beyond the bathroom door, a door led to a set of stairs. Hanging from the ceiling over the landing was an intricate and beautiful piece of abstract dross artwork. Gilgamesh had only heard about dross artwork – artwork made of dross by a Crow – second hand. Perhaps he would appreciate the art better another day. The thoughts in his mind raced, unable to slow down or make any sense.

There, there, Shadow said, after he and Sinclair led Gilgamesh up the stairs and laid him down on a couch in Shadow’s office. Shadow was a calm and contained man, as youthful as all Crows, with dark hair, an olive complexion, and a comforting presence, just as all the other Philadelphia Crows had said. Sleep, rest. You’re stressed and wounded. There’s dross for you. Whatever you…

Shadow’s calming voice faded into the beyond as Gilgamesh finally relaxed, lost himself and passed out.

Enkidu: September 8, 1967

We lost, Master, Enkidu said. He knelt on the ground, head bowed. His Master had caught up with him near Cobb’s Creek, west of Philadelphia, where they now found privacy among the beeches by the creek. His wounds from the fight with the Arm still ached. The pack Gals continued their keening cries, mourning Grendel’s death. I failed. Even the crisp smell of Pennsylvania autumn couldn’t overcome the reek of blood and despair.

You didn’t fight to the death! You had her on the ropes! Wandering Shade said. He was a lean man with brown hair; he wore the uniform of a Philadelphia police officer and an expression of twisted anger. I don’t understand you at all. He paced among the trees, beating an oval path through the witch hazel and woodsorrel that flourished under the beeches. Chipmunks had been scrabbling in the brush before Wandering Shade arrived, but they were gone now.

Enkidu searched his mind and his instincts. It wasn’t my responsibility to fight to the death, he said, after much thought.

The Law says otherwise, Wandering Shade said. My Law!

Enkidu shivered at his Master’s incomprehension. Master, it doesn’t. Wandering Shade didn’t answer. Master, you’re above the Law. You give us the Law. But the Law is itself, beyond truth and understanding.

What have I done? Wandering Shade said, his voice barely audible through the ongoing cries of mourning. Was this all wrong? He sat down on the ground beside Enkidu and put his head in his hands. The top of his head barely came up to Enkidu’s shoulders. I’m afraid you’re right, Enkidu. The Law is itself. I can touch the edges of the Law, but because I am what I am, the Law can’t guide me.

The Wandering Shade was a Transform, a Major Transform, but also a mystery; some different thing, perhaps something new or perhaps something hidden.

What shall I do, Master? Enkidu asked. His deep voice rumbled low in his broad chest. I could hunt down those Arms. Attack them again. It should be easier now that they’ve gone their separate ways.

Wandering Shade sighed, half in disgust. All you’d do is get yourself killed. You were lucky that Grendel had already wounded the Arm. Otherwise you’d be dead, too. His Master shook his head. We fought them and they won. The contest is settled. We need to move on to other matters.

But Master, I… The contest didn’t feel settled to Enkidu. The memory ate at him from inside, demanding his attention. The past and the future all held threads in the same responsibility: leaving the fight, to fight another day. He left the fight and satisfied one part of that responsibility. Now he needed to complete the responsibility and ‘fight another day’.

Wandering Shade interrupted him, not letting him finish. Go home. Take the pack Gals with you. His Master waved his hands in exasperation at the distraught Gals. We’re done here. I’m done here.

Sorrow and sadness filled his Master’s voice. Master? Are you abandoning us?

Wandering Shade sighed. I don’t know. He paused and rubbed his temples. My path led us to this failure. I need to meditate on it and figure out why, what the flaw was in my plans. Texas calls.

Texas, Master?

Out west of San Antonio is a land of hot dry rocky hills, scrublands of salt cedar and mesquite, good for nothing but snakes. There’s solitude and beauty in those rocky hills. I may not return.

Master? In the blink of an eye, Wandering Shade vanished. One second he sat beside Enkidu, the next second he was gone.

Enkidu joined the Gals in a roar of agony and loss. All of them but Cleo skittered away from Enkidu’s grief. Grendel might have been a fool, but he had been the elder Hunter and far more skilled at keeping the pack Gals in line. He would need to chain them together to keep them from running.

He must get better. To meet his responsibility he had to master the skills necessary to keep the pack together, or he would lose them as well. He stood and looked over the pack where they clustered by the small creek; as he gazed at them they all skittered away farther. All except Cleo, who strode toward him.

What’s to become of me? Cleo asked. She was a dragon-formed monster on two feet, with glistening scales and vicious two-inch claws. She was the most intelligent and most human of them, but she mourned Grendel as much as the rest. Her reptilian eyes could not cry, but she had scratched her face in the pain of her loss and blood ran down her cheeks like tears. The rest of them are too addled to remember Grendel past their next draw, but I will.

Cleo was a mystery. No other Gals were so smart or so talkative. In the end, she had been smarter than Grendel. Enkidu found her daunting.

I’ll give you a choice, Enkidu said. He leaned forward, wolf-man style, into her personal space. If you want, I’ll give you a clean death. Or you can choose to be my Gal.

How can I choose? Grendel made the choice for me, months ago, she said, not backing down.

Your link to Grendel was through the Law, Enkidu said. I can undo that and bind you to me through the Law just as easily.

Cleo blinked her reptilian eyes and stepped back. Can you? Enkidu nodded thoughtfully in answer to her question. If you can do that, then yes, I’ll be yours. She bowed to him, formal. I will be yours, under the Law.

I can’t bind you yet, but in a week, when your juice gets too large for you, I promise I’ll make you mine, Enkidu said. Until then, do you think you can help me corral the Gals?

Yes, master, she said. Her voice had an edge of defiance in it, but also the barest beginnings of respect.

Enkidu suspected the week would be very long.

Enkidu: September 18, 1967

Enkidu stood and stretched, fingers scraping the low ceiling. Sex and juice. Marcie, the latest of Grendel’s Gals to go over, gazed up at him in wonder. Master! I…I’m not afraid of you anymore!

He smiled at his success. He had taken her down, a little over the line into withdrawal, and driven the Law into her deeper than it had been before. The change showed in her eyes: intelligence and love.

She would stay with him by choice now, and he wouldn’t have to keep her chained. Another success. Now if she would just lose the Grendel-scales, everything would be fine. He liked his Gals so much better when they had fur.

Three days ago, they had commandeered a semi-truck outside of Harrisburg. He and Cleo took turns driving and they had made their way back to Illinois. After ditching the truck, they found an abandoned flooded-out farmhouse on the Kishwaukee River, north of DeKalb, and made it their new home.

Enkidu heard a commotion up top. He unchained Marcie and led her up the stairs from the basement, into the kitchen and the bright light of the afternoon sun streaming through the windows, the standard promotion for a Gal who no longer needed chaining. He found Cleo on her knees next to the sink, terrified, in front of a man he didn’t recognize. A lawman with no scent.

Master?

Yes, Enkidu, it is I, the man said. He turned to Enkidu; his Master looked and felt different. Today he stood just over six feet, his face tanned and chiseled. "It’s time to see."

The man dropped his metasense protections and revealed himself and his glow. Enkidu’s knees hit the ground with a loud bang. Master! Marcie fled the kitchen with a scrambling of claws on linoleum, desperate to be as far away from the Master’s attention as possible.

Enkidu couldn’t turn his metasense away from Wandering Shade. His glow shined like a beacon, brilliant and hypnotic. His Master had become the Law, a Law far greater than Enkidu held. The Law illuminated his Master’s glow, deeper and more complex than anything Enkidu had metasensed before.

Enkidu fought terror, for he knew from his own experience what each of those lines and bands in his Master’s glow meant: horrible agony, a trip into withdrawal. That was how you placed the Law; you took a person’s juice away, edging them to the terrible border of withdrawal, then in the scars of withdrawal wrote the Law into their glow. This was how Enkidu had received the Law, and this was how his Gals received it from him, as they were taken all the way from the edge of Monster and too much juice down down down to no juice at all, the edge of withdrawal. His Master did this to himself. The thought was both awesome and horrifying.

And terrifying. All things cost, and the Law was no different, despite its benefits. Because of the Law, Enkidu had lost his wild animal abandon, the passion driving him away from humanity. The most chilling loss Enkidu discovered was that he had forgotten the concept of money. Even now, after weeks relearning it, he still struggled with the concept.

The Law had weakened the wild part of him, but America was no jungle. The Law allowed him to retain his understanding of modern society, and Enkidu knew he was far more powerful as a whole because of the Law.

What had his Master lost?

I am now the Law, Wandering Shade said. The afternoon sun illuminated his face like the glory of an angel. Now I understand. Now I share your responsibility. I am now perfection incarnate and I finally know the way forward: my flocks of Beasts, the Hunters and the others, are going to multiply until we are strong enough to fight the Transform leaders. Then we shall fight, and then we shall win. All shall have the Law and be content. All who take on the Law shall be allies. All who spurn the Law shall be our enemies.

His words were formal and hummed with power. Enkidu smiled.

I have a present for you, Enkidu, as an example of my power, the Wandering Shade said. I brought this nameless wretch of a Beast Man all the way back to near humanity with but one potent Legalization. I have named him Horace.

His Master’s tone implied an in-joke, but Enkidu didn’t understand. A bipedal armored bear appeared beside his Master, between the pantry and the non-functioning stove. The Beast hadn’t been there a second before.

Wandering Shade had indeed become all-powerful.

I am Horace, and I am to be your trainee, the bear said, in Law-driven formality. He bowed to Enkidu. I abase myself to you, and humble myself to you, so that you can train me well. Horace, like Grendel, was far older and stronger as a Beast-Man than Enkidu, but he had lost his mind in the process. Now, under the Law, he had regained enough mind to be able to speak, and kept much of his former strength.

I accept the responsibility, Enkidu said, guided by the Law.

Things were looking up, he decided.

Gilgamesh: September 20, 1967

Gilgamesh got up in the morning refreshed, without pain, and nearly full up on dross. He didn’t remember where he was for several heartbeats, until the memories all came flooding back to him. If he could trust his memories, this was Shadow’s spare room, in Shadow’s apartment above his stationery shop. Gilgamesh had nested here for an unknown number of days, resting and recovering from his panic and injuries. He had left the room only to go to the bathroom across the hallway. In the beginning, he had crawled to the bathroom at night, panicked even by the idea of leaving his tiny sanctuary. In his time here, he hadn’t had to deal with anyone at all.

He poked his head into the hallway and smelled bacon, eggs, orange juice and toast. On the opposite wall was an oval mirror ringed in tarnished brass. Below hung a fake birdbath filled with tiny ceramic robins. Gilgamesh looked at his reflection and barely recognized himself: thin, emaciated and far too youthful for his own comfort.

Come on over here, Shadow said, calmingly cheerful, from the dinette attached to his tiny kitchenette. Gilgamesh startled for only a second before he padded down the hall, hungry.

Have some breakfast, Shadow said, placing a plate at the seat nearest Gilgamesh. Shadow sat at the other seat at the small two-person table. Dig in. I had an inkling you might come out today.

Thank you, Gilgamesh said, and sat. He ate a rasher of bacon and sipped from a cat-inscribed glass of orange juice.

How much do you remember? Shadow asked. Gilgamesh shrugged. Do you remember your name? Do you remember you’re a Crow?

Gilgamesh nodded. He ate some scrambled eggs and nibbled on a slice of toast. I remember Philadelphia, he said. Shadow sat up straighter. I remember the attack by the two Beast Men. I remember Wire and Tolstoy’s deaths. I don’t remember many details.

I’m glad you remember. Crows often forget everything after such a horrific set of experiences.

Even that they were Crows? Gilgamesh asked.

Shadow nodded.

He remembered Shadow’s meals, large ones, left waiting by his door after Shadow had gone to bed at night. He didn’t understand his current hunger.

Stressed Crows don’t eat much, Shadow said, easily picking Gilgamesh’s question out of his mind. Typical senior Crow behavior, but to Gilgamesh’s surprise, the mind-reading no longer bothered him. Panicked Crows don’t eat anything, even when they are suffering from grievous wounds.

Gilgamesh flashed back to Enkidu’s initial attack. He had slashed Gilgamesh’s hamstrings. He stopped eating for a moment and felt the backs of his thighs. They were still tender to the touch, bloated and swollen.

I thought those healed before my escape, Gilgamesh said.

So, you escaped? Tell me, please.

Gilgamesh took a deep breath and licked his lips. I’ll trade the information for what’s going on with my legs.

You have recovered! Shadow said, with a boisterous laugh. You’ve recovered quite well for only three weeks under my care.

Three weeks! Gilgamesh said. So long?

Shadow nodded. Last time I helped a Crow as traumatized as you, he took nearly two months before he was willing to talk to me. He paused, then answered Gilgamesh’s question. The way we Crows heal something like severed hamstrings is to grow a new set. In your rush to get out of Philadelphia you ruined the new set of hamstrings you were growing. That’s why your legs are so swollen: your body not only made you a new set of hamstrings, but is slowly reabsorbing the remains of the other two sets.

Ah, Gilgamesh said. No wonder I’m so hungry. He told Shadow about how the Skinner had freed him after Enkidu had been defeated and fled. He took another helping of eggs and refilled his glass of orange juice. After a few more bites he told Shadow what he remembered of the Skinner’s fight against Enkidu and Grendel, the attack on the Hera Focus and what little he knew about Tiamat’s fight with an unknown senior Major Transform. Even after I sicked up on her, the Skinner was more interested in making friends with me than punishing me for my mistake. If we play things right, I’m sure we can do business with those Arms. In some strange way, Gilgamesh realized he liked the Skinner, both a comforting and terrifying thought. His paradoxical emotions felt very Crow.

Shadow snorted. You and Sky may be the only Crows left with that opinion. After the Murder of Crows in Philadelphia, there aren’t any other Crows who want to be on the same continent as any of the predators, much less in the same city. Even I find myself a bit discommoded.

Gilgamesh shook his head and took the last piece of toast. He piled strawberry jam a half inch high and ate the concoction in four bites. Sky he had heard of but never met. He had read some of Sky’s letters to Shadow, as well as the other Crows’ jaundiced opinion of Sky. They called Sky an ‘adventurous Crow’, but Sky took the insult as a compliment and ran with it. He, Gilgamesh, found himself similarly labeled, but so far he attempted to ignore the issue. ‘Murder of Crows’? That sounds like Sinclair to me. Complete with cheeky devious pun. Where is he?

Recovering, both from the events in Philadelphia and having to drive in Manhattan, Shadow said, a small grin on his face. You’re right, though: his name for what happened is a bit overblown. Perhaps we should call it the Philadelphia Massacre, given what happened to the Skinner, the Hera Focus, her Transforms and those poor wretches who attacked them.

Gilgamesh shrugged. I hope you don’t mind, but I read some of those bound volumes of letters you store in your guest bedroom. They were the only books in an entire bookshelf devoted to crow figurines and miniatures of far too many styles and shapes. Not something one could miss.

Shadow smiled. I don’t mind at all. He took Gilgamesh’s plate and put it in the sink, then led Gilgamesh into his front room, and to a couch. I keep those volumes in the back room to remind panicked Crows the world is not all bad, and to help them understand our Crow society. Did you learn anything from them?

Gilgamesh shrugged again. I’m not a typical Crow, am I? The only Crows referenced in Shadow’s letter collection who were anything like him were Sky, Midgard, and Occum. Sky did a great many things with normals and in general took more risks than even Gilgamesh did. The risks Occum took with Monsters and Beast Men were also far greater than Gilgamesh could imagine himself ever taking. Midgard took wandering to its logical extreme, depending on his reputation for trading information to cadge dross wherever he went, at least east of the Mississippi. Each of them, Gilgamesh included, was an atypical Crow. He wasn’t sure if this was a good or bad thing.

Shadow’s front room overflowed with knickknacks and kitsch of all kinds, but lacked any sort of family pictures or portraits. Gilgamesh especially liked the intricate Black Forest Cuckoo clock, high on the wall above the chair where Shadow sat.

No, you’re not typical, Shadow said. I consider this a positive, even if many of the other senior Crows will not. All the Crows who gravitate to me tend to be flighty, but as I’d learned about myself years ago, to repeatedly handle risks requires a flighty Crow.

Gilgamesh nodded. Stoic Crows who took risks likely didn’t live through them.

You brought me dross, Gilgamesh said, not wanting to dwell overly long on the subject of risks. I thought you argued against dross gifts.

I’m opposed to a practice whereby student Crows bring gifts of dross to their Gurus, Shadow said, his frown sudden and his eyes alight in anger. For the first time, Gilgamesh metasensed Shadow’s glow. What starts as a gift ends up quickly becoming a custom, then an accepted system of payment. The practice warps Crow society.

From the bound letters, Gilgamesh knew Shadow saw the world in patterns, the motions of the large currents of change as well as the small eddies of adjustment. He thought Transform Sickness had thrown humanity into the rapids, and because of Transform Sickness the world was becoming a much more dangerous place. He thought many of the things other Crows did were counterproductive. In that, Shadow agreed with his own Guru, Innocence, but he and Innocence disagreed mightily as to which things were counterproductive. Crow society and Transform society were fragile things, and Shadow feared anything threatening them might trivially shatter them. About my relationship with Innocence I will not speak, Shadow said. His statement didn’t surprise Gilgamesh, though he did wonder why Crow Gurus had Gurus themselves. A Guru aiding a student with dross is a different thing entirely, one I’m not opposed to at all.

I thank you, then.

Where are you going to go when you leave here?

Gilgamesh shrugged. Nervous, he stood, paced across the room and back, and finally settled in a corner chair under an old weathered print of a flapper holding a fizzing soft drink bottle of something called Old Number Three.

Shadow smiled slightly. You’re going to follow Tiamat, aren’t you? he said, more of a statement than a question. Gilgamesh didn’t answer immediately. Shadow waited.

Finally, Gilgamesh looked away. I’ve been following Tiamat since my transformation. He missed her. A lot.

Shadow nodded. Only an Arm, or one of Occum’s stabilized Beast Men, are able to oppose a human intellect Beast Man such as Enkidu. He’s a brand new danger, but something us older Crows long feared.

Shadow was far too observant. He knew how badly Enkidu in particular and Beast Men in general terrified Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh shrugged again. The cuckoo clock struck eight and both Crows paused to let the bird chirp.

The events in Philadelphia made the world a more hazardous place and has driven the distrust between the Major Transforms to a higher point than ever before, Shadow said. A single Transform, Sadie Tucker – who you’ve met – serves as the sole point of contact between the Focuses and Crows. The Arms and Focuses are no longer working together. The Crows fear Occum is now a captive of his own Beast Men. We’re all alone now.

Gilgamesh nodded. From the bound letters he had learned the Crows had always thought of themselves as alone. Gilgamesh suspected their fears and worries were a mistake.

Don’t get careless, my friend, Shadow said. Don’t forget how dangerous an Arm can be.

I doubt I’ll forget the danger, Gilgamesh said, nodding. They’re a lure that could easily become a trap.

Also, don’t discount the Arm you call Tiamat just because she’s young. She’s the only one caught up in the Philadelphia Massacre who came out unscathed. She’s one to watch.

Gilgamesh smiled. Unscathed, eh? Gilgamesh patted his leg, where he now wore Tiamat’s knife. He had long suspected his goddess was something special.

I prepared something for you, for when you leave, Shadow said, changing the subject. I’ve been working on this ever since you showed up.

Gilgamesh raised an eyebrow in question. Shadow took a binder from the drawer of a Queen Anne table laden with ceramic mice and a shadowbox filled with wine corks, and put the binder on Gilgamesh’s lap. Gilgamesh opened up the binder. Inside were all the notes from those long conversations, the letters he and the other Philadelphia Crows had sent to each other, all neatly punched and ordered. The binder held the cumulative wisdom of Philadelphia, a priceless treasure as well as a dangerous collection of information. Any Transform researcher in the country would give his soul for the contents of the binder.

I meant these notes for you, to keep safe, Gilgamesh said. He had taken them out of Philadelphia in a grimy box, stained and disorganized.

Shadow nodded. Of course. Don’t forget about the memory problems that come with lean times, though. I’d hate for you to forget the Philadelphia Massacre and what you and the others accomplished before then. I made copies of every page. You don’t need to worry about losing them.

Gilgamesh took the binder into his lap and paged through it. It contained about half of all the notes and letters they had written, all Gilgamesh had been able to recover.

I’ve added to the notes, Shadow said. If you look in the back, I appended a small section containing everything I could think of that would be worth knowing. The history of Crows that’s safe to know, the names of all the Crows I know, and my observations on Transform Sickness. Add to these notes as you talk to other Crows and send back to me anything you find out.

Gilgamesh flipped through to find the section in the back. Shadow’s small appendix was half again as large as the original notes. He closed the binder. Thank you.

I think I need to clear up a few misconceptions to help you understand what’s going on, Shadow said, referring most likely to Gilgamesh’s personal additions to the document. As you’ve heard, the Focuses did betray the Crows early on. The first Focuses, not the Focuses who transformed after the end of the Quarantine. I consider this distinction very important. Second, Chevalier does have a claim to the St. Louis Detention Center; he lived in the Center during the Quarantine, though he hasn’t personally used the place since the Quarantine years. His prickly nature is why the two of us don’t see eye to eye, but Chevalier isn’t a bad man just because he and I don’t get along. Echo, on the other hand…

The warning letters?

I get them too. I don’t know who’s behind them. I don’t believe Echo is.

The intelligence of Arms and Beast Men?

I once too believed them to be sub-human, but what you and the other Philadelphia Crows learned changed my mind. Pause. How many eggs did I flicker into existence behind you? Shadow asked. A test. Just like Thomas the Dreamer, but Shadow dropped the test like a bomb into the middle of a conversation. Trickier, too: the ‘dross illusion eggs’ had only been ‘visible’ to Gilgamesh’s metasense for three seconds and they had been moving quickly at the time.

One hundred and seventeen.

You’re improving, Shadow said. He grinned widely. As you mature further, this and your other talents will improve. Gilgamesh nodded. He needed hope, in any form.

You need to know I’ve never met a young Crow like yourself, Shadow said. Gilgamesh wasn’t sure of the proper response to Shadow’s statement, so he lowered his eyes and watched Shadow’s hands at work. The Guru grasped a pen in his hands from the end table beside him, but he didn’t write with it. Instead, he merely twisted it between his fingers, and as he did so, Gilgamesh faintly sensed Shadow’s hands manipulating tiny dross currents. Gilgamesh waited patiently through the long silence.

Did you know the Focuses are organizing again? Shadow asked.

Gilgamesh shook his head.

The younger Focuses are pushing the Council and succeeding, though I’m not happy with the method the troublemakers used to depose the West Region representative last March, Shadow said. Each year there are more Transforms. We now have two Arms. Beast Men abound. Crows gather in flocks for the first time in a half decade, in Boston, Portland and San Francisco. I fear the same events that overcame the Philadelphia flock may strike at them, as well.

Gilgamesh shivered.

When you add everything together, the sum is frightful. The Transform community is no longer stable, Shadow said, sounding formal, and twisted his pen again. The old order, in place since the early days of the Kennedy administration, has no place for Beast Men or Arms. Things must change, and we Crows find ourselves in the center of the conflict. How are we to survive something like this?

Shadow wasn’t a comforting person to listen to. He noticed far more troubles than Gilgamesh did and Gilgamesh saw plenty on his own. He suddenly felt profoundly young and inexperienced, despite his forty some odd years.

What do I do, sir?

Shadow shrugged. I can’t tell you what to do because you’re something new. The Arm you follow made you into something different. The older Crows know several advancement pathways. I can teach you them when you get older, but only if you want. You might come up with something unique, something we need to add to the Crow repertoire.

Gilgamesh sat motionless, embarrassed. At the edge of his metasense, he found he could almost make sense of the complex dross patterns surrounding Shadow. Shadow’s dross patterns were like the dross art, but intricate, potent, useful in some way the dross art wasn’t useful, and quite specifically hidden.

What I’ll ask of you is that you follow your heart. We need you and whatever new talents you discover. Keep in contact with me. What you learn, and share, I can teach. Because the Transform society is changing, we’re going to need to find new paths to survive. I think you’ve found a new road to walk. Keep on it.

Gilgamesh smiled and began to plan his search for Tiamat. Shadow opened the small drawer in the end table and pulled out a business card. He gave it to Gilgamesh. Anthony Peloquin, it said, in an elegant cursive script, certainly a false identity, along with the stationery shop’s address.

And don’t forget to write! Shadow said, a big smile on his face.

Chapter 2

Air. Food and water. Shelter. Juice. Transforms might put juice, the substance in them that defines them as Transforms, third on that list. The cannier among them, including most Arms, put it second.

Inventing Our Future

Carol Hancock: September 23, 1967

After two days of hunting I hit the jackpot in the Quad Cities, a frail forty-ish woman living alone, on the verge of going Monster and of course high on juice. She laid curled up in her bed in her apartment, surrounded by her collection of ceramic cats and four live Maine Coons. I staked her out for about two hours, figuring out the particulars. As far as hunts went, they didn’t come any cleaner than this.

I took her as she slept. My chosen method of body disposal was simply to crack her bones until she folded up small and carry the body out in a duffle bag. With my strength, I would make the bag seem light and no one would suspect a body. She would vanish into thin air. People vanished all the time. With only two Arms in the country, police didn’t think of Arms first when they thought up perps.

I took her juice and I fell beside her, enjoying the spectacular ecstasy of the kill, even nicer because of the huge load of juice in a woman so close to going Monster, and because I didn’t have to worry about discovery.

She was a normal kill. Perfectly normal. I had no reason to suspect anything unusual might occur. None at all.

My name is Carol Hancock and I’m an Arm. You might have already guessed that.

My dark rap sheet includes about 70 kills, 40 of them men, 30 or so women, and three kids. I wasn’t happy about the kids. They never get Transform Sickness. Like all Arms I’m a predator who preys on Transforms, human survivors of a disease, Transform Sickness. The Shakes. I made my transformation about a year ago, in September of 1966. Armenigar’s Syndrome was the official name of my condition.